November

OK wow it’s been a thing. A real thing. But now we’ve got a blog, so we can chat to you or maybe at you, but somehow together? Halloween is over. Anyway, we’re trying to keep in touch, to keep you up-to-date with all things BAM and Beautiful. Bonfire night is over. We have loved seeing everyone again since reopening and the continued support for local businesses is so encouraging, especially now. We’re glad to still be with you since all summer’s glamorous threads have faded into faux fur, incandescent street lights, and pulling your collar up before bracing the outdoors, but for the moment, the stormy weekends have lifted what looks like all of the last leaves from the trees.

We’ve limited our capacity to make sure everything is running a lil safer, so our shop is upstairs only and we are serving take-away coffee and cake. OH THE CAKE on our counter is coming, every week, from Yolk and Pod, A.Pastry and Sweet Jane: tender collections of doughnuts – donuts{?} – immaculate cakes, cinnamon twists and vegan treats. They’ve also made dog biscuits for us, well, for your Doggos, which we are totally into.

Every month, we’ll push through and bring you some things from our shop, some atmosphere & ambience, hmmm maybe updates too, yes! Things like that. Things like our new brass animal collection: cats and rocking horses. Things like what we’ve been drinking, listening to, complaining about, obsessing over and things like that. If you would like to keep up-to-the-month with what we have in store and what we’re up to, then you can subscribe down below and whoosh every month you’ll have an email from us.

In Our Hopper right now - our lock down cheerleaders Common Coffee. They’re a staff and customer favourite with bold, colourful package design and, well, delicious coffee. The Sweet [Brazil, Comunidade Larenjeiras] is by far everyone’s first choice, and we’ll have it on Espresso for the next couple of weeks. Their Roastery is in Fife, just outside Dunfermline and they run a cafe, Mayvn, at Eden Locke in Edinburgh – as well as some pop-ups, currently at Century General Store, Edinburgh. In Lockdown V1, in March, Common supported their wholesale customers, us included, by allowing their online customers to choose a café for 25% of the sale to go to. For the common good, and a wonderful help and gesture. Thank you!

The Blankfaces’ sweatshirts have been back in store for a couple of months and are worth checking out, not just with us but in their new shop on Great Western Road in the unit previously occupied by Love and Squalor. They’re a social enterprise with profits being divided for various charities, and percentages going to the homeless who created and/or inspired the designs of the sweats and other products. It’s a fantastic organisation with the explicit and directed aim of ending homelessness, some thing we should all be actively supporting.

They’ve also satirised Glasgow’s People Make Glasgow, morphing it into the active and far more engaging People Make Mistakes which is unequivocal and binding. We are responsible.

We have some kitchenware from Saltwater Stoneware, a Glasgow-based ceramicist. They are stunning and calm and take their aesthetic from the Hebrides with their marbling and setting reminiscent of rock strata and pebble collecting. They have a lovely collection of tablestuffs on their Etsy. At BAM we’ve got some cups and mugs [espresso through tea mugs], serving bowls and seasoning dishes.

It’s the first time we’ve stocked them and they do fit in my loves, be-you-ti-full-ee. Earthenware that reminds us of an oh-so-famous twitter thread run by Dean Wilson, a poet, who posts a pebble of the day, straight from Withernsea, Yorkshire. Those strata!!

As maybe a litttttle gift for you, everybody knows we love gifts, there’s this chocolate from COCO. You’ll feel so guilty when opening it not because it’s chocolate, but really because the packaging is so delightful: every flavour has its own commissioned packaging, every product is a collaboration between COCO x [Artist].

Case in point: the be-you-ti-ful Cold Brew Dark Chocolate [below, centre] with the packaging designed by Rachael Hood an Edinburgh-based illustrator, print-maker and art director. You can find a full list of COCO’s collaborations on their website.

We have all the pictured ones below, with our fave focus on local makers and designers. Oh, whisper whisper, there’s a Gin & Tonic bar, but you can’t get tipsy on it! We have tried.

Adieu adieu we see you in December, same time, same place. Oh oh! We are open Thursday - Sunday 11am - 5pm, please come and chat to us, especially with Doggos!

[HEARTYS]

BAM xx